


Nightmares

by Kateydidit



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Brief suicidal thoughts, Faked Death, Gen, Nightmares, Present Tense, Ridiculously Codependent Flatmates, johnlock if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 09:47:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kateydidit/pseuds/Kateydidit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has nightmares. Sometimes, Sherlock does too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> During November 2012, I challenged myself to write a new fic every day. That didn't quite work out like I planned, but here's one of them anyway. Be gentle. XD  
> Un-beta'd and un-Britpick'd; any errors are entirely my own.

Sometimes, it’s not so bad.

Sometimes the nightmare is just light and sound and snatches of action, fragments of gunfire and debris flashing by too quickly for it to do anything more than startle him into consciousness. Occasionally on those nights, he can even fall back asleep, if he tries, if he wants to. He doesn’t, usually. Those are the nights he sits up and thinks.

Those are the good nights.

Sometimes the nightmare terrifies, dragging him down and stripping him of his logic and throwing him headlong into a maze of fear and pain and nowhere to go and explosions and cries in the night. It is those nights that he wakes with his back pressed against the wall, fumbling for a gun that isn’t there, gasping for oxygen and safety and  _not there, you’re okay, you’re okay_.

Those are the bad nights.

The bad nights happen more often than the good nights, and the good nights happen all too rarely, but at least they’re not  _those_  nights. He’d give anything to stop  _those_.

Because on  _those_  nights, he watches people die.

He dreams of people he’s killed, of people he knew, of people he couldn’t save. He watches them die by his hand, or by someone else’s, his mind caught on a loop as he relives the same events again and again, helpless to stop it, helpless to change it, able only to watch.

He wakes up screaming.

And that,  _that_  is when it’s bad.

Those are the nights he fingers his gun.

 

The first night living with Sherlock Holmes – after the crime scene, and the running, and the killing-the-awful-cabbie and the Chinese and the small smile on Sherlock’s face as he said “good night” – after all of that, for the first time in weeks, John doesn’t dream at all.

He takes this as a good sign. (And if it only proves what Mycroft says about him, well, at least he knows he’s not the only occupant of 221B Baker Street addicted to adrenaline.)

Of course it doesn’t last, and the dreams are back the next night, but he doesn’t have any of  _those_  nights that week, which counts for something.

It’s the  _next_  week that he dreams of death.

“John!”

He comes awake with a start to hands shaking his shoulders and a pale face hovering over him in the dark. The shouting cuts off abruptly, leaving him gasping for air. The hands leave his shoulders.

“You were shouting,” Sherlock says, looking uncomfortable. “In your sleep.”

John looks at him for a moment, reorienting himself, breathing hard, then sits up and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yeah,” he replies, screwing his eyes shut. “Yeah, I do that sometimes.”

There’s a silence for a moment.

“Do you-”

“I’m fine,” John interrupts, looking up. Sherlock hovers beside the bed, hands loose and drifting at his sides. There’s a certain vulnerability in his expression, something to the set of his eyes that John would call  _unsure_. “I’m fine,” he repeats.

Sherlock watches him for a moment, then nods and quickly leaves, shutting the door behind him. Before John can so much as wonder at his flatmate’s actions, a thread of music weaves its way into his room, an elaborate stream of notes drifting up the stairs and diffusing through the closed door. He listens as his heartbeat slows, letting his breathing gradually match the tempo of the song, before swinging his legs over the side of the bed and following the sound out of his room.

Sherlock stands at the window, violin tucked under his chin, swaying slightly with the music he is teasing from the instrument. In the moonlight he looks ethereal, like a work of art: a godlike sculpture come to life in their living room. John watches him for a long moment, silent, unwilling to break the spell, but Sherlock pays him no mind, so he pads into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. He closes his eyes as the water heats, letting the music purge the images of blood and death and murder from behind his eyelids, willing himself to focus on the sound and not the sights still flickering through his mind.

Finally, cup of tea in hand, he returns to the living room. With his back to John it is as if Sherlock is hardly aware of John’s presence, all of his concentration focused on the melody before him, but the something in the notes gives John the feeling that Sherlock wants him to hear this. With a last few flourishes, he finishes the piece, allows the bow to fall to his side, violin still in place. He gazes out the window, saying nothing.

A beat. Two.

John sits down.

Sherlock raises his bow.

Neither of them sleeps, and neither of them mentions it.

 

The next time he wakes screaming, violin music is already issuing from downstairs. He finds Sherlock standing at the window, and a cup of tea, still steaming, waiting beside his armchair. He sits down.

Sherlock raises his bow.

 

John stops fingering his gun.

 

They almost die at the pool.

Of course they’re both fine, and of course nothing happened, but the fact remains that they very well  _could_  have died. And Moriarty got away.

John prepares himself for a very bad night of sleep.

“ _John!_ ”

He’s out of bed and down the stairs before he can really think about it, gun clutched in his hand, heart hammering, a thousand scenarios racing through his mind. “Sherlock-” he starts, bursting into his room, ready to shoot, to defend Sherlock however he has to.

There’s no one there.

No madman with an Irish lilt and a wicked smile, no gunman or bomb-strapped civilian waiting to destroy them. Just Sherlock, twisted in his sheets.

John lowers his gun slowly, confused-

“No, stop- John, no-!”

And now John doesn’t know what to do, because Sherlock Holmes, the self-proclaimed sociopath… is having a nightmare.

And he’s calling out for John.

His ink-dark curls are mussed, one hand flung out on the bedsheets, the other clutching at them, and his brow shines with sweat. John stands there for a moment, at a loss for what to do.

“ _John!_ ”

It’s as if his name unlocks his muscles, and carelessly tossing his gun onto the bedside table, he climbs onto the bed beside Sherlock and shakes his shoulders. “Sherlock- Sherlock, wake up!”

The detective fights him for a moment before his eyes shoot open. The look in his eyes is wild and fearful – more frightened than even the horrid look in his eyes when he saw the bomb strapped to John, and the expression throws him for a minute. Sherlock’s eyes search him frantically, as if looking for something he could have sworn was there, before the fear slowly drains from them. It’s as if John can see the moment his brain comes back online; Sherlock draws himself up slightly, his expression not entirely managing to hide his embarrassment.

“Sorry,” John mumbles, dropping Sherlock’s shoulders and sitting back. “I heard you call out… Thought you were in trouble or something.”

“I’m fine,” Sherlock says automatically.

Silence.

“I didn’t know you had nightmares,” John supplies, rather awkwardly.

“I don’t,” says Sherlock.

They sit for a minute.

“I should-” John starts, clambering off the bed

“Stay,” Sherlock interrupts. He seems to catch himself, and glances away. “Please,” he adds, seemingly addressing the ceiling.

John stands beside the bed, looking down at Sherlock with some surprise. “Okay,” he says.

He sits back down, leaning against the headboard.

They don’t say anything for a long moment.

It’s Sherlock who breaks the silence. “It was about the pool,” he says abruptly. “The bomb.”  John turns his head to look at Sherlock, who is still addressing the ceiling. “I dreamt…that it went off,” he finishes, slowly.

John looks down briefly, considering that. “You shouted my name, you know. In your sleep,” he says quietly, studying Sherlock again. Sherlock says nothing.

“Why didn’t you run when I told you to?” John asks.

Sherlock finally turns to look at him, something unfathomable in his eyes. They look at each other for a long moment, and then Sherlock looks away. “Good night, John,” he says quietly. He turns over.

And if John falls asleep there, neither of them mentions that either.

 

Sherlock falls.

And falls.

And falls.

John relives it every night. Every single night.

Sometimes it’s punctuated with memories, and that’s even worse. It’s worse when John sees him smiling, or examining something under his microscope, or playing his violin, or looking at him across the flat, and then has to watch him die.

He can’t even wish that the dreams would stop. They’re all he has left.

There are no good nights or bad nights anymore. There’s only this. It’s like the old death-dreams, but so much worse. And he’s still helpless to stop it, helpless to change it, able only to watch.

He wakes up sobbing, and there is no violin issuing up the stairs to comfort him.

 

Then, one night, there is.

 

The first night living with Sherlock Holmes – after the punch, and the confession, and the get-out-of-my-flat and the weeks of indecision and the reconciliation in John’s eyes as he said, “come home” – after all of that, for the first time in three  _years_ , John doesn’t dream at all.

He doesn’t know what to think.

 

When he wakes sobbing the following night, at first he doesn’t hear the violin.

He hears a soft crying outside his door, echoing his.

When he opens the door, no one is there, but the floor is warm beneath his bare feet, and it is only moments later that the violin starts up.

The cup of tea waiting next to his armchair is cold.

John sits down anyway.

Neither of them mentions the tremor in the music, and neither of them sleeps.

 

The third night, he wakes to screams.

“ _John!_ ”

It’s reflex, as fresh as three years ago, and it’s uncontrollable; at the sound of Sherlock screaming his name, before he has time to think or breathe or plan, he’s vaulted out of bed and dashed down the stairs.

He finds Sherlock, not in his room (and it’s  _his_  room again, not the horrid spare room John can’t bring himself to rent out), but slumped over the table in their living room, head resting on his violin case, hands clutching at the instrument and bow. “NO!” he shouts, and suddenly he’s awake, jerking to life violently and gasping for air. The instrument clatters to the table.

John stands there silently, watching Sherlock come back to himself, really taking him in for the first time since his return. The detective looks exhausted, the rings around his eyes more pronounced than ever, and there’s a weariness in his posture that makes something in John’s chest ache.

“I heard you call out,” he says softly, and Sherlock jumps a little, head snapping around to stare at him.

They just gaze at each other for a moment.

“Have you been sleeping?” John asks.

Sherlock glances away.

John walks across the room, slowly, like with any sudden movements Sherlock might disappear. He sits down in the opposite chair.

“I can’t,” Sherlock finally replies, not looking at him. He stands, a whirlwind of movement, and starts packing his violin away in its case, as if hiding the evidence of some misdeed.

“Sherlock,” John says, his hand reaching out to still the detective’s.

Sherlock looks up at him. “I can’t sleep because if I do, you get shot in the head,” he says bluntly. He clicks the case shut and turns to stash it away.

“Sherlock,” John starts. Sherlock ignores him. “ _Sherlock_.”

He stops moving then, his back all that’s visible. John stands and makes his way behind Sherlock.

“Why didn’t you run,” he asks, “when I told you to?”

Sherlock turns, slowly, staring at John. They look at each other for a long, long moment.

“I said ‘dangerous’,” he says quietly, “and here you are.”

John smiles.


End file.
